


Scents of our Dawn

by Jaelijn



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Holidays, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Gauda Prime, Schmoop, Winter Solstice, honestly this is, if that term still means anything to anyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 10:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: orHappy Solstice.Kerr Avon had never thought of himself as the kind of man who would ever settle into domesticity...





	Scents of our Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, everyone! Enjoy a terribly sentimental Avon/Vila fic. ;)

Kerr Avon had never thought of himself as the kind of man who would ever settle into routine, into domesticity. Even when he had dreamed of spending the rest of his life with Anna, wealthy enough to be safe from the Federation, he had never thought that they would settle down in the traditional sense. They had both been too restless, too inquisitive, too disparaging of tradition and societal norms – or at least Avon had been. He had never known – would never know who Anna had really been, now, but the pain about that had faded into dull regret a long time ago. At any rate, Avon had never thought that he would one day enjoy coming home after a long and entirely uneventful day at work and simply slip into bed with his already sleeping partner and do nothing but sleep until the next day, on which he would be doing the same things again, and so on, for the rest of his life, and pray that it would be a long one.

And yet, here he was, doing exactly that.

Vila mumbled a sleepy greeting, shuffling around almost subconsciously to make space for Avon on the bed. He only twitched back for a moment when he came in contact with Avon’s cold skin, then wrapped himself around him, sticking his nose into Avon’s neck. “Finally let you go, did he?” he mumbled.

“Blake’s away with Avalon, Vila,” Avon whispered with a smile, shamelessly stealing some warmth from Vila’s back. “I was in the lab.”

“Never understood the point of work, and on a holiday, too. Go to sleep, you’re freezing.”

Avon pulled the blanket up, wrapping it around their shoulders again, and obediently closed his eyes. He slept longer and better here than he’d had in years – his back gave him less trouble, and he had stopped constantly listening for a siren or other that meant they might be shot out of the sky. Instead, if he woke during the night, he simply let himself be lulled back to sleep to the sound of Vila’s snoring, wrapped in their combined warmth. The alarm that woke him in time to go to work would sound soon enough.

Only it didn’t.

Avon came awake to the smell of something… sweet and warm? Baking? There was an empty, but still warm space next to him where Vila should have been, and Avon rolled to his side to blink tiredly at the clock. The initial shock at what he read there lasted just long enough to make him push himself up on his elbows and wake up properly. However, it faded just as quickly, leaving behind a careless, blameless brand of resignation, and Avon sank back down onto the mattress with a sigh. So he was going to be late. With Blake away, it wasn’t as though anyone payed particular attention to Avon, anyway – that had been the price that Avon had asked for offering Blake his continued assistance, after it was all over: that he and Vila be allowed to fade into the background, to have their own lives away from the limelight, away from the prying eyes and the hero worship that turned Avon’s stomach. Barely anyone recognised them at a glance, these days – not with Vila’s beard and Avon’s greying hair. It served its purpose. Avon supposed he could be glad that there was any colour or indeed any hair left after the years they’d had.

Avon patted the bed, trying to figure out how long Vila had been up, when the thief in question peered in through the doorway.

“Ah, awake, are you?”

“Why’d you switch off the alarm?” Avon asked, not feeling at all like getting up now.

“It’s a _holiday_ , Avon! Besides, you’ve been overworking yourself again, and Blake is away, so you have no reason to.”

“Blake was away yesterday, too.”

“Yes, but the holiday is _today_ – do you even know what day it is?”

“That’s what I keep you around for,” Avon shot back with a grin, “after all, you have to be good for something.”

Vila barely managed to hide his smile behind a put-upon expression and flung an oven glove at Avon which bounced harmlessly off the mattress by his feet.

“Your aim used to be better, too,” Avon commented dryly. 

“Traded it for the baking skills. Do you want any, fresh out of the oven?”

Avon looked up at the ceiling for a moment, contemplating the smell in the air – orange and cinnamon and chocolate? It was very Vila, whatever it was. “I want you to come back to bed,” he told him, and found himself wishing he would be able to say that, to Vila, for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was selfish, that he didn’t want to be the one left, but he had come too close to that already and Avon had never claimed to be particularly altruistic.

“It’s cold,” Avon added, almost as an afterthought. He couldn’t really tell, from under the blankets, but it had been cold outside when he returned in the night, and they always kept the heating in their flat fairly low – after all, neither of them was usually home during the day, with Vila running the Daylight Casino, and Avon whiling away his hours in the lab or in tactical sessions with Blake. 

“We could light a fire,” Vila suggested. They didn’t have a place for a real fire, of course, but one of the more useful housewarming gifts had been an artisan space heater that simulated a real fire adequately – it omitted the smoke, which, as far as Avon was concerned, counted as a feature rather than an oversight.    

“Or we could stay in bed. We’re halfway there already.”

“Aww, Avon, I might have managed to teach you how to be lazy, after all.”

Avon fished for the glove and threw it back at him, his aim slightly more accurate, but Vila’s reflexes hadn’t dulled with age and he ducked away under it. Vila laughed and disappeared from the door.

He gave Avon just enough time to settle back fully under the blankets before he reappeared, balancing a plate and two steaming mugs. Avon scooted back in the bed, slipping into Vila’s place by the wall, letting Vila clamber up to join him without spilling whatever drinks he was carrying all over them both.

“What about the casino? Running itself, is it?”

Vila gave him an odd glance. “It’s closed today – it’s a _holiday_. Really, Avon, sometimes I wonder about you.” He passed Avon one of the steaming mugs – hot chocolate, it turned out, which explained where the chocolately smell had come from.

“Only sometimes?”

Vila happily wrapped his hands around his own mug and wriggled around until he had managed to stick his bare feet back under the blankets. Avon would never know how Vila could stand the cold floor in the mornings and he hissed and drew back as Vila’s feet brushed his shins. Unperturbed, Vila balanced the plate with its small pile of warm cookies on his knees. “What has you so occupied in the lab, anyway, that you forget about the holidays? It’s not like it’s one of the new ones.”

The Republic Union of Federated Planets had established some holidays to commemorate the rebellion that led to its foundation, as well as reinstated the right to celebrate whatever old holiday tradition had survived despite Federation rule. The latter had a habit of catching on much faster, to Blake’s occasional chagrin, and Vila was right: today was one of the old ones, so old and so persistent that Avon remembered celebrating it even as a boy in the Alpha circles of Federation society.

“I expect you’ll be lighting candles next,” he told Vila, keeping his voice deliberately flat. Not that Vila was fooled.

“Ah, so you _do_ know what day it is.”

Avon let his gaze linger on Vila’s smile, drawing warmth from the cup of chocolate. Quietly, he said, “It hadn’t occurred to you that _that_ is why I was spending more time in the lab?”

Instantly, Vila sobered, even though Avon knew that it wouldn’t last for more than a moment. “Blake said to forget about Gauda Prime.”

“And you do everything he says.”

“It’s just that it never feels like it did then. ‘t was hot on Gauda Prime, hot and humid and stuffy. And it turned out all right in the end. And if _Blake_ says to forget about it…” Vila snatched up one of the cookies and took a huge bite. “I’d rather be celebrating Solstice,” he said, through his chewing.

“Yes.” Avon studied him for a moment, reflecting. It _was_ getting easier. Blake refused to even remark upon the date year after year, and Vila always threw himself into the holiday celebrations leaving Avon no space for reminiscing, though Vila’s ways had become a bit more laid back lately. It didn’t stop Avon’s mood from dropping, but compared to the bleakness of depression that had gripped him in the first years, he’d found himself wondering instead how he could possibly have fallen into this kind of domesticity, and with someone who’d been there, no less, despite it all. How he somehow had not managed to scare any of them away. In the last years, he had become so acutely aware of his happiness that it was almost beyond endurance around this time, but after one year of avoiding Vila as much as he avoided Blake, Avon decided that he would never try that again, no matter how horrible he felt. And here he was, still in bed in mid-morning, Vila’s warmth right beside him, and feeling strangely content.

“I was trying to model a self-generating circuit,” he told Vila, “like the _Liberator_ used to have. It’s not really my field, but there is no one else who had a chance to study a functioning system like I have.”

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

Vila shrugged. “Well, you can try again tomorrow. You’re not heading out today.”

“What do you plan to do, tie me to the bed?”

Vila arched an eyebrow and held out a cookie to him. “No need.”

“Hm, perhaps not.”

Avon took the proffered treat and Vila removed the mugs and plate from the bed, snuggling down beside him.

“I’m still going to make a fire later. And light the candles,” Vila said and yawned. He stretched out an arm behind Avon’s head, inviting him into an embrace. Avon ignored the invitation only long enough to swallow the remainders of the cookie, fruity and spicy. Then, he settled down on Vila’s chest, determined to ignore the twinges of _How the hell did I get here?!_ that made him want to run. He inhaled the scent of Vila instead, overlaid as it was with the smell of fresh baking that was saturating their flat.

“No protests?” Vila whispered into his hair, sounding so fond that emotions he couldn’t quite identify threatened to close up Avon’s throat.

“Later,” he said, pulling on the blankets so they wrapped around them, the soft faux fur lining of the throw on top caressing his cheek. They’d allowed themselves a bit of luxury when it came to the bed, as an exchange for not being too showy about their wealth in public. Blake wouldn’t have approved, and even if they didn’t necessarily give a damn about Blake’s opinions, it would only have drawn attention. They were better off without that.

Vila wriggled a bit.

“What are you doing?”

“Jus’ getting another cookie before they go cold.”

Avon leant up to kiss him, stealing the lingering taste right out of Vila’s mouth.

“There’s more, you know,” Vila told him, his eyes sparkling, “you don’t have to try and steal mine.”

“Later.” Avon settled back down, and this time Vila’s arm wrapped around him, pulling him close. He could feel Vila’s heartbeat under his palm, comforting and warm.

“Happy Solstice, Kerr,” Vila whispered, just as Avon was on the cusp of falling back to sleep.

“Shut up, _Restal_ ,” Avon mumbled back and then, happily, drifted away in the warmth, Vila’s breath softly stirring his hair.  


End file.
